


Don't Fear the Dead

by Hetta



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M, Guns, Keith (Voltron)-centric, Lance with guns, Love in the apocalypse, M/M, Other, Pining Lance (Voltron), Sharpshooter Lance, Survival, The Walking Dead AU, Walkers, Zombies, keith is bad at feelings, klance, relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-19
Updated: 2017-06-19
Packaged: 2018-11-15 22:14:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11240346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hetta/pseuds/Hetta
Summary: After almost being eaten alive by walkers, Keith is saved and offered a safe place: Fort Arus is humanities last stronghold against the monstrosities of the world. There, Keith struggles with entirely different issues...namely, why he can't get that annoying Lance guy out of his head. Because there's definitely no time for love in the zombie apocalypse.Walking Dead AU--One-Shots/Prompts exploring the ruined world overran by walkers, as well as the struggle humanity has to face against not only undead monsters, but alive ones as well.





	Don't Fear the Dead

**Author's Note:**

> This is what happens when I’m obsessed with Voltron and Walking Dead at the same time. 
> 
> The basic idea is to write this out as loosely related one-shots (but my plans always go astray, so…?) Therefore, each 'chapter' may or may not be in chronological order. Honestly, it just depends. Since it’s a heavily influenced Walking Dead AU, and I’m crap at coming up with my own ideas, you can expect a lot of similar scenes or themes from TWD to carry over. 
> 
> (On an un-related note, I’m congratulating myself for posting on here for the first time, after several years of lurking…)
> 
> Enjoy!

Keith had been running for hours. 

He stumbled through the darkness, feet catching on dead leaves and gangly tree roots. With every step he took, one defining thought echoed over and over in his mind: _I’m going to die tonight._

He wasn’t being morbid, he was being _factual_.

And the facts were these: 

1) He did not have food, water, or a fortified shelter. 2) He was _exhausted_ , running on fumes that he could not replace (directly related to fact number 1). And 3) While he became increasingly fatigued, those he was running from did not. They continued after him with endless endurance. 

Keith had lived through this hellish new world long enough to know just how this would play out for him. People in this particular situation—alone, sleep-deprived, and nearly starving—did not survive. 

He had always managed to keep ahead of the game until now, but his ticket was up and by tomorrow, he would be just another nameless, poor sucker; another unknown casualty amongst millions. He was not foolish enough to delude himself otherwise. 

He was going to die tonight. Simple as that. 

His lungs felt like they were ripping to shreds in his chest, and his legs shook from the exertion. 

But still, he kept _running_. 

He cast a look over his shoulder and gauged the distance between him and the walkers. 

Walkers. Biters. Lamebrains. _Zombies_. 

Whatever arbitrary name they were given, they were on his ass. He couldn’t discern any of them individually through the darkness, but there were enough of them to create a mass of bobbing shadows as they lumbered in his wake. 

Easily fifty or more of them; a whole damn swarm. 

Their grotesque and inhuman moaning preceded them, a constant threat of the lessening distance. They weren’t moving faster— it was Keith that was going slower. 

Ahead, a single walker emerged from the shadows, turning his direction and ambling right for him. It snapped its rotting teeth, blood oozing from its mouth—yellow eyes gleamed with supernatural hunger, and black, decayed hands reached out to grab him. 

Still at a full run, Keith gripped his katana tightly in his hand and swept it in a diagonal arc, a practiced and concise motion. His blade sliced through the walker’s head like butter and it thudded to the ground as he kept onward.

A strong bout of nausea hit him; he hadn’t eaten in a _long_ time. Double that with the many hours he had spent fleeing from the undead, and he was in a rough shape... 

Enough that he failed to notice the ground suddenly disappear from under him. 

He cried out in surprise, the world turning upside down and back again as he plummeted down the side of a ditch. He rolled to a halt at the bottom, into icy water—it wasn’t deep but the temperature was cold enough shocked him to the bone. 

Keith floundered back up to his feet, the nausea hitting him once more and his wrist throbbing with pain. 

He searched wildly for his sword and his bag, both of which he had dropped, but a violent rustle of leaves and snapping twigs drew his attention upward—with frightening clarity, Keith saw the horde of walkers emerge from the woods as they caught up to him. 

Their decaying flesh was the color of volcanic ash, marred with bleeding lacerations and pestilent wounds, flaunting their stubbornness to stand on their two feet, even when they all should be laying still and _dead._

One walker clumsily fell down the slope in the same manner as Keith; he jumped backwards, narrowly avoiding its landing spot. 

It splashed stupidly in the water, trying to get at him. Keith reacted quickly, stomping down on its head with a defiant shout. 

Its skull, already weak with decomposed flesh and softening bone, crushed like an aluminum can under his boot. 

Wine colored blood spurted over him and the walker stopped writhing—dead for _good_ this time. 

Under its body, Keith saw the barest glint of silver reflect in the moonlight— _his sword!_ The damn walker had fallen on top of it! 

Another walker dropped into the ditch to join him, barely four feet away. And another one, and more after that. They were falling all around him, filling the ditch. 

Some managed to stay upright and shuffled down the slope, while others just tumbled down from the lack of coordination. 

_“Shit! Shit Shit!”_ Keith hissed, time running out. 

He turned back to the one he had just killed. He grabbed a handful of its wet T-shirt and pulled. 

It was heavy, and his wrist seized in pain once more. 

_“C’mon!”_ he cried, pulling again.

He shoved the pain and the exhaustion back into a small corner of his mind. Gritting his teeth, he pulled once more with all his might, feeling his muscles screaming in protest. Wretched hands of the surrounding walkers grabbed at his clothes. 

The walker’s body shifted just enough to uncover the hilt. He leapt down for it with his uninjured hand, and swung it around wildly, no time for finesse. 

The blade whistled through the air and sliced through three walker’s heads that had been only moments away from biting into him.

The swing was sloppy and it threw him off balance. He toppled backwards, onto the corpse he had bludgeoned with his boot. The walkers he had just killed splashed down into to the ankle-deep water, but more were already taking their place, reaching for him. 

Keith rolled to his feet and bolted up the opposite side of the ditch, fingers digging into the grass to pull himself up. Clawing his way to the top, he was surprised to collapse onto solid, level ground…

 _Ashphalt!_

He had stumbled upon a _road._

Immediately, his mind jumped to survival tactics—he could move more quickly on the road, and it could lead him to a building of some sort. Any shelter would do right now, even just a shack. Anything opposed to being exposed and out in the open with the walkers. 

Keith’s arms shook as he pushed himself up to his feet, newfound determination. 

But something caught his ankle before he could get all the way up, and he was jerked back like a balloon on a string. His chin smacked onto the pavement. 

Looking down the length of his body, Keith saw a single walker had climbed out of the ditch much more quickly than he had anticipated. It gnawed on his leather boot, searching for the flesh underneath. 

_“Dammit!”_ he cursed desperately. _“Get off me!”_

He tried to kick it off, but it weighed a ton in his weakened state. It grew tired of the shoe and pulled itself up his body. His sword arm was pinned down—he couldn’t fight it off.

The walker lurched towards his neck. 

With lightning reflexes, Keith blocked it with his free arm, digging it under the creature’s jaw and holding it at bay. It wriggled and snarled against him, trying desperately to get in a bite. 

Keith struggled to keep it back, knowing he would lose. 

The adrenaline that had kept him moving the entire night was extinguished, and he felt the oppressive wave of weariness settle into his bones. It came down to _this_ moment—him pushing with all his might against a hungry creature that would never tire out. 

_I’m going to die tonight. I’m going to die right now._

His arm weakened, enough that the walker could dive at his throat once more. Keith closed his eyes, wishing for a quick death, even though he knew he would not be that lucky. 

A cacophonous gunshot bellowed through the night. The echo reverberated between the trees, ringing out. 

The head of the walker exploded above him, and he was once again bathed in a dead man’s blood. 

“Nice _shot_ , Lance! Though you could have killed the Live-Meat!”

“ _Pshh!_ I had it just fine!” 

Keith laid in complete shock, chest heaving and hardly believing what he was hearing—the voices of… _living people?_

How long had it been since he’d heard such a thing? Weeks? _Months?_

Even though he had never felt the spin of the Earth, Keith felt as if it had screeched to a sudden stop underneath him. 

The weight of the dead walker was lifted off him and he was blinded by several flashlights pointing down at him. 

“Holy _spaceballs_ …” someone whispered. 

Keith must have looked bad—covered head to toe in blood, guts, and dirt, he probably looked like a walker himself. He blinked against the lights, breathing rapidly. 

“Were you...bit?” a voice asked hesitantly. 

Keith could not respond. His tongue felt like an anchor in his mouth, his throat as rough as sandpaper. His whole body shivered, from his shoulders to his fingers to his toes. 

_You’re in shock_...a small part of his brain supplied. 

Yo _samurai_ , we asked you a question.” 

“Give him a second, Matt, _jeez_!” a girl's voice cut in.

“We don’t have time for that. This guy has a whole _horde_ of biters after him! The others are maintaining them right now, but they’re gonna get out of that ditch any minute now…” 

_Others_? Keith’s brain spun dizzily. Just how many people _were_ there? 

He couldn’t see well, his eyes still fighting to adjust to the intensity of the flashlights aimed on his face, but he forced himself to speak, throat feeling like two rocks grinding together. 

“N-no.” he croaked. “I wasn’t bit.” 

It was the first words he had spoken to another human being in who knows how long. Keith had been on his own for so long, he had learned a new kind of existence of complete silence and solitude. It was jarring to suddenly be thrown back into the presence of people. 

Still with a racing heart, Keith sat up gingerly, favoring his uninjured wrist. The group of people took a step back cautiously, as if he was likely to spring up and start attacking. 

A girl with short, messy hazelnut hair and round glasses leaned into his vision, inspecting him. 

“Not bit,” she informed. “Are you happy now, Matt?”

“He could be lying,” Matt leaned down to inspect him as well. Even in his half-aware state, Keith immediately noticed a familial resemblance between the two—their faces were near replicas. They had to be siblings.

“What, you wanna frisk him? I thought you said we don’t have time!” the girl snapped. 

“Katie, we don’t _know_ him,” Matt argued imploringly. “We can’t just take a stranger back with us.”

“Um guys?” a new voice spoke up behind the siblings. Keith’s eyes darted to another figure standing behind them, though he appeared as just a tall shadow to Keith. 

“Since I’m the one who technically saved him, I should get to decide…”

“Not _now_ , Lance!” The two siblings shot back harmoniously. 

But the newcomer— _Lance_ —pushed his way in between them, kneeling next to Keith as well. 

He tilted his white and blue Adidas hat back from his face and eyed Keith’s tattered appearance. However, there was something tender and concerned in his gaze, unlike the distrustful, scrupulous stare Matt had fixed him with. 

In their close proximity, even in the darkness, Keith could see that Lance had a soft mixture of ethnicity about him—olive skin, even complexion, and tousled brown hair...

Keith felt his heart race for an entirely different reason than running from walkers. 

“What was the point of us stopping then?” Lance asked, looking back at the two siblings. 

“We could have just kept going and let him die, but we intervene. If we leave him now, he’ll just be dead by morning, and us saving him would have been a complete _waste_.” 

The heavy implication he placed on the last word was not ignored. It was something that Keith, and anyone else still alive on this earth, agreed to upon all too well—in this world, nothing was to be _wasted_. 

The siblings had no response to that and could only watched as Lance offered him a hand. 

Keith saw in his other hand he held a rifle; one of those tactical combat kinds with gadgets and pieces he wouldn’t know the first thing about. He had never held a firearm before the end of the world, and afterwards, he had even _less_ of an opportunity to do so. 

He stuck to what he knew, which was wielding a sword. 

But for some reason, he fixated on that gun in Lance’s hand, finding significance that it (and the person holding it) had just saved his _life_ , when he was absolutely positive he was going to die.

He took the offered hand. 

“ _Lance_ …” Matt said warningly as Keith was pulled up. 

“It’s not your call, man,” Lance responded shortly. “We take him back and Allura will decide.” 

The last several hours of exertion caught up with a vengeance—Keith wobbled and swayed, but before his legs could give out completely, Lance’s arm tightened around him like a python. His head spun like a top. 

“ _Whoa_ , easy…Shiro! Can I get some help?” 

Lance’s breath ticked in Keith’s ear as he called to another member of their group; one who had apparently been keeping the walkers at bay by the ditch. 

Keith felt himself losing his grip quickly, the faces of the people around him swimming in and out. Amongst it all, something still operational in his brain struck a chord of recognition. 

_Shiro_... 

_“Wait!”_

A voice from near the ditch yelled out. Keith heard footsteps running over to them. 

“Is that…? No, no, it _can’t_ be—!” 

Another person moved into the ring of flashlights and Keith stopped breathing as his eyes took in the sight of the familiar figure.

Impossible…Keith thought he was _dead!_

Based on the matching look of pure disbelief on his face, it appeared Takashi Shirogane also thought the same thing about _him_.

 _“Keith?”_

Shiro asked quietly, eyes looking him over with fear, confusion, and the barest hint of tears. 

They had gotten separated from each other months ago...or was it _years?_

Keith couldn’t tell anymore, he had lost all sense of time, caught up in the day to day life of struggling to _survive_. 

He swore the last time he saw Shiro, he was getting torn apart by walkers. But clearly, he had seen wrong… 

Keith tried to respond, but black spots danced behind his eyes, and despite the arm wrapped around him, his legs folded in like a Jacob’s Ladder toy. 

And then, Keith’s world went entirely black.

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeknownst to him, Keith definitely swooned in Lance’s arms like a little diva, just so you know. (Lance is immediately star struck, the poor boy). 
> 
> This turned out longer than I thought. The other one-shots might not be this long. But they also...could be? 
> 
> I don’t know, just prepare for anything, I guess!


End file.
